Villers-Brettoneaux and ANZAC Day

23/4/12

Another rainy day (teeming down almost all day), Eddie  driving forward into it unfailingly (amazing engine pulls so easily, quieter than any diesel I’ve driven, very smooth and torquey and around 10l/100km!), found our way al-la-TomTom on the no toll roads, through the canola fields - green and gold everywhere and then the war memorials and graveyards start to appear as we enter Le Department de Somme, 

Canadians

Germans

Wil, nearing the end of “All Quiet on the Western Front”, is a bit gobsmacked to be here where it all happened, ruminations of 11000 never-found Australians lying in the fields under the canola and lucerne around us, what untold misery/regrets and loneliness they may have suffered in their last moments, or more likely nothing at all as they were probably blown to smithereens and buried under a mountain of mud?

Welcome Aussies!!

VillersB "Victoria School" honours Aussies

Entered Villers-Bretonneaux and teared up with street names like Rue de Melbourne and small French post war houses decorated with Aussie flags. Aussie accents abound, kangaroo & digger cut-outs everywhere, green and gold banners strung up all over, a few bus loads of Aussie school kids here for a choral performance, Australian flags flying with the Tricolour over the French War Memorial. We stationed Eddie beside  the moving town centre memorial and set forth into the teeth of the rainy gale via the information centre, the Aussie choir practice, down to the Franco-Australian Museum .It is a very informative centre focussing on the Australian contribution in WW1, a highlight being the transcript of Paul Keating’s 1993 speech when the Unknown Soldier was moved home to Canberra.  An excellent informative film/documentaries was running about the war, but unfortunately we were kicked out because it was closing time so missed out on the tactical genius of Monash at Le Hamel - look that up later.  Back to Eddie where we decided to stay put for the night, met a lovely Aussie couple in the motorhome next to us, and alongside them, a bunch of 20 something blokes sitting outside their motorhome next one over drinking beers (must be Victorians - it’s 9 deg!)  

Jen cooked another great pasta dinner, then the sun came out so we did a novel thing - left the kids reading in bed and the parents got on the bikes and rode off to the Australian Memorial which is about 2km out of town, standing proudly on a broad knoll, overlooking in every direction miles of rolling cultivated fields of green and gold and brown, the sun setting behind a dark rain cloud throwing the “fingers of God” over the fields, the graves/tombstones and lawns/gardens kept beautifully among the grand stone structures/towers built in memory.... Huge French TV semitrailers lined up, their crews readying the scene for the event in 2 days - no doubt they still really appreciate the Australian contribution nearly 100 yrs ago!  

getting set up

Riding back past a new housing development with foundations dug wondered how many remains they might have found, what laws govern such activity?

And why, because some Austrian crown prince was shot by a Balkan  uni student?  What an amazing series of events that led so many young Australians to give their lives in a war between Europowers over-egoed, over-armed and under-brained.  In Australia it was advertised as sport! 

Couldn’t happen again, the “War to end all wars” ........ 

24/4 a day in the battlefields

woke to the sounds of the busy workers setting up for tomorrow all around us, mowing, trimming, planting and cleaning.  The French Lady of the Memorial has a new blouse of pretty flowers at her feet.  Peered around us out the misted Eddie windows at all the post war buildings here in the centre of Villers Bretonneaux, casting our minds back to the photos of the area after the battles, wondering about the fierce gunfights that raged right here where we are parked in cozy Eddie comfort, despite the cold and drizzle Jen leaps out for a run (how could you not when you consider the hardships our troops endured?), kids slammed some maths before we  revisited the Victoria School and FrancoAustralian Museum to see more of the documentary regarding Monash’s battle at Le Hamel. Alas, the movie theatre being used by VIP’s so just drove out there to Le Hamel to take a look (only a few km from V-B) and found another marvellous Aust Govt funded memorial, again high on a hill where on 4/7/18 Monash employed new tactics to wipe the well entrenched Germans off the hill (a la “Shock and Awe” with planes, tanks, heaps of artillery and infantry + ammo resupply via plane/tank, used planes flying over the enemy in the night to disguise the sound of the approaching tanks). 

Le Hamel Memorial

He planned it on July 4th to honour and inspire the US troops he borrowed (against highest orders), the Aussie veterans, jaded and exhausted were jumping out of their skins to show these green yanks what they could do. He planned it to the minute and rehearsed it ad nauseum, the whole thing was to take 90min - it took 93min for them to overrun the astounded Germans.  The memorial brings the battle alive around you with the informative stations and then the flags of the allies standing proud in the wind over the remaining eroded German trenches.

Serendipitously Wil finished the last pages of “All Quiet on the Western Front” huddled in one of the trenches attempting a scrap of shelter from the tiring wind and drizzle, which moved him immensely.  The book has given him a strong feeling of what real war is about and any boyhood “romance/adventure” attached to guns/war seems extinct.

We sat at Le Hamel in the memorial carpark for a few hours schooling, having lunch and chatting and watching the steadily increasing flow of Aussies turn up, pile out of their rental cars in shorts and T shirts, jump straight back in and remerge in their winter gear and do the run past the info stations.

Back to the Franco-Australien Museum for the docos (Kel stoically straining with the avalanche of non-girly info) . We perused the photographic hall downstairs showing the devastation of this wee village together with revealing snaps of Aussie and French soldiers. Magnificent haunting paintings by Aussie artist, Margaret Hadfield, of soldier’s faces partly black & white and partly in colour provoked thought of what was lost and what was left behind to grow our nation. We’d rehearsed the schedule for the morning innumerable times concluding to park up on the edge of the village of Fouilloy in readiness for the early shuttle from over the road.Jeff off for a cycle around the battlefields and cemeteries. He returned telling of a better spot allowing us to walk quietly in the dark up the vast lonely empty hill toward the monument.

Aust War Memorial sunset

So we drove to the perfect night stop around the back of someone’s house on a gravelly pad just a short walk up the hill for the dawn service at the Aust Memorial. The whole community welcomes folk from all over the world parking anywhere to mark this important occasion together. 

Shared the spot with a lovely couple of Aussies who greeted us, waving out their van window as we circled in. We zipped over for a chat.  Guess who?? Margaret Hadfield THE renowned artist whose paintings we’d admired a few hours earlier. She has won the Gallipoli art prize and her partner Katherine ,ex -navy, has a pHD in military history - more serendipity!

Clothes (several layers) lined up on the benches and after a beautiful mince curry we piled in, alarm set for 4am!

25/4/12 ANZAC DAY

BEEP BEEP BEEP!! 0400.No complaints as we imagined what the Aussie troops were doing a few hundred meters up the hill 94 years ago (surrounding the enemy with 2 pincers and busting them out of Villers Bretonneaux, thus halting the German blitz toward the sea and saving the crucial rail centre of Amiens up the road from capture), worse still the horrors at Gallipoli 97yrs ago.

4 layers, beanies and gloves, coffee in hand we met our Aussie neighbours,shared packs of tissues and set off up the hill, guided in the dark toward the still & powerfully lit monument, joining a long foot procession and even longer bus convoy.

5000 gathered, quiet & orderly and bitterly cold.

Seated, curled into each other, we waited some 50 rows back as a massive crowd gathered. Many were in full, smart uniform, many proudly wore lapels heavy with medals and ribbons, and many, many more young, old, Aussie and French alike donned akubra hats, flags and Aussie colours.  Our language differences were not relevant as we smiled, hugged and made way for each other in the dark.  A few minutes into the ceremony, we got ushered to the third row from the front to sit amongst dressed military VIPs..... in our layers of beanies and noisy rain jackets/ponchos. The service followed in English punctuated with hymns by a very gifted bunch of Perth high school musicians & choral singers.  Moving letters from mother’s of lost soldiers & letters to mother’s of dead soldiers were read by fine young Australian teenagers.  Dignitaries spoke with the best being an emotional address of thanks and respect, sadly in French only, delivered by their Minister of Defense. Viva La France et Viva Le Australie. Somehow however, all the talking and words muddy & distract things and don’t reach as deep for me as our visit yesterday on bikes when we quietly communed with the headstones, our imaginations and our hearts. The kids sat so well in the strikingly icy wind, frightful cold and eerie dark for 2 hours. Wil, tucked in close to Jeff, seemed pensive and sombre.  Kel intertwined with me, respectfully hung on with thoughts of where white pup could climb to in the tower and how fancy the women in uniform looked. 

As the sky became a deep purple highlighting the fiery orange lights of the monument, the Last Post sounded out piercing into the hearts of the shivering crowd, and across the wide & tragic expanse and across the world. 

Ubiquitous, involuntary tears welled up strong from a place of primitive knowing and deep connectedness and bold men in uniform did their best to hold their quivering lip as they stood to attention. 

Numb and unable to feel our toes or fingers, we filed past a profoundly generous offering and vigorously welcomed, warm coffee & croissant from the village folk of ‘Villers.’  Down the hill to Ed, we put the heater on and boiled the billy for breakfast all the while chatting about unimaginable scenes of utter terror & dementing hardship that so so many young Aussie guys endured with such courage.  They just kept getting up.  Then about the terrible, shocking & never-ending empty pain of bereaved families.  Margaret knocks on the door and joins us for a busy chat about so much - can’t we sit together for the day?? She shows us some of her paintings and we gift her All Quiet on the Western Front.

It’s hard to leave here - we have such an affectionate link with this tiny town. We’ve all learnt & felt so much.  We don a special lapel pin of our two flags tightly fitted together.  We quietly drive on to Paris, fondly catching our last glimpses of Villers-Bretonneux.

Rain and more rain washes us in to a campsite alongside a very full, and thundering Seine.  We choose a spot next to a lock to enjoy the seething yet soothing sound of the water, and take a quick afternoon snooze. Up for croissants, a bike ride, some Paris sightseeing planning and a LONG overdue shower x 4 ( it’s been days...and some...) before early bed.